Tag: covid-19

Toilet paper, paper towels, and hand sanitizer for some stupid reason are being bought up like tomorrow will never come. In a socialist society supply can’t meet demand because government controls the means of production and prices. In this case the government, in cahoots with large corporations, is applying implied price control and are also controlling the rate of consumption. What is the result? Shortages all across the country.

Some people saw an opportunity as soon as the nuttiness began to purchase large quantities of the goods that were being hoarded. The most prevalent example is this poor gentleman in Tennessee who saw an opportunity and tried to exploit it.

On March 1, the day after the first coronavirus death in the United States was announced, brothers Matt and Noah Colvin set out in a silver S.U.V. to pick up some hand sanitizer. Driving around Chattanooga, Tenn., they hit a Dollar Tree, then a Walmart, a Staples and a Home Depot. At each store, they cleaned out the shelves.

Over the next three days, Noah Colvin took a 1,300-mile road trip across Tennessee and into Kentucky, filling a U-Haul truck with thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer and thousands of packs of antibacterial wipes, mostly from “little hole-in-the-wall dollar stores in the backwoods,” his brother said. “The major metro areas were cleaned out.”

Matt Colvin stayed home near Chattanooga, preparing for pallets of even more wipes and sanitizer he had ordered, and starting to list them on Amazon. Mr. Colvin said he had posted 300 bottles of hand sanitizer and immediately sold them all for between $8 and $70 each, multiples higher than what he had bought them for. To him, “it was crazy money.” To many others, it was profiteering from a pandemic.

Amazon and EBay discovered what he was doing and suspended his account thereby cutting him off from their customers. Who benefits from this? Amazon? EBay? Matt Colvin? The public that wants the products Mr. Colvin has in inventory? The answer is NO ONE. The products sit there on shelves instead of benefiting anyone.

Granted the government did not force Amazon or EBay to take the actions they did. Instead they took pre-emptive action before the public pressured government to step in accusing the companies of gouging.

The public is poorly educated on how markets should work and the simple laws of supply, demand, and scarcity. What should have happened once retailers noticed that people were hoarding certain products is to immediately start raising prices. The act of raising prices ensures that people only buy what they need. Thereby leaving more product available for everyone. That’s why stores are full of more products than we can buy in normal times.

But, because prices were held low and limits were placed on the number of items allowed for purchase items sold out all over the country. There was nothing stopping multiple people from one family to come into a store and purchase their limit. If you had the funds you could make the purchase. The most ludicrous example is the run on toilet paper. It’s difficult to explain the brainless action of hoarding toilet paper.

Anti-gouging sentiment only benefits the rich. They are the ones that can easily go out and purchase more than what they need leaving nothing left for people with fewer means. Imagine if a pack of toilet paper skyrocketed to $60.00. How many packs would people then buy? At least there would be product left on the shelf for the next guy with a dirty ass.

The basic lesson is that if you control prices and they are held artificially low due to government decree or anti-gouging pressure we end up with shortages where if prices were allowed to float there would be plenty of ass wipes purchase in the store rather than ass-wipes buying them up and keep them at home.

This is what this madness has come to. A virus in which it appears that 97% of all infected fully recover has spread such panic that the governor of the State of Kentucky ordered a man to be imprisoned in his own home because he refused to self-quarantine.

The patient from Nelson County is a 53-year-old man who tested positive at the University of Louisville, then left against medical advice, Beshear said. The Lincoln Trail District Health Department asked him to self-quarantine, but he refused.

A law enforcement officer has been posted outside the man’s home, Beshear said.

“It’s a step I hoped I’d never have to take, but we can’t allow one person who we know has the virus to refuse to protect their neighbors,” Beshear said.

Nelson County Judge-Executive Dean Watts had to declare a state of emergency in order to invoke a little-known statute that allows him to force a “self-isolation or quarantine.”

“We’ve got to make sure that people who have tested positive, that we know could be spreading the virus, and simply refuse to do the right thing, do the right thing,” Beshear said.Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/health-and-medicine/article241200076.html#storylink=cpy

Self-quarantine. What a lovely hyphenated word. It gives the illusion of voluntary behavior. When in reality it is a de facto order from the state to imprison yourself until they deem you are ready to be re-integrated into society.

How stupid has our civilization become? The “better safe than sorry” mantra has been drilled into our heads for the better part of four decades and really took on steam after 9/11.

The attempt to prove Trump colluded with Russia failed. The impeachment and subsequent acquittal in the Senate left Trump more popular. The pandemic of COVID-19 however, is the event the media and the Democrats have been looking for to kill off a Trump re-election.

The media, the Democrats, and some Republicans have loathed President Trump since he got the Republican nomination in the 2016 election. It blew into full blown psychotic hatred after he beat Hillary Clinton in the general election. They never could conceive of a President Trump. I didn’t want him as President either but I didn’t share the same hatred and fear of him.

They tried to take him down almost immediately with the Russian collusion baloney. Two years of the Mueller investigation and all the leaks from that fiasco that ultimately resulted in NOTHING.

Then the phone call to Ukraine. Leaked by a so-called whistleblower. A whistleblower that had no first hand knowledge of anything he/she/they were alleging. They pushed through impeachment on that basis knowing the Senate would not convict and remove him from office. They expected that hanging impeachment around his neck would be the anchor that would sink his campaign. It didn’t. He came out more popular than he went in.

Now, we have COVID-19. If you read all the news reports, the virus that causes it, SARS-COV-2, results in mild symptoms of a fever, cough, and trouble breathing for about 80% of people infected. Another 15% have more serious symptoms. The remaining 5% are serious enough to be hospitalized but less than half of them are at risk of death. And most people at risk of death are those above the age of 60 with already compromised immune systems.

The virus has probably been in the United States since late 2019. China tried to hide the problems they were having with the virus and allowed free travel from the area. There are 11 million people in Wuhan and it is a business center that have people traveling about all over the world. The virus has been out and it will remain out and perhaps most of us will contract it at some point like we do a cold or the seasonal flu.

The media started to report infections as if The Plague was unleashed across the world. We would hear daily counts of 5 more people confirmed infected here and 10 more there. Mind you, not 1,000 here or 2,000 there. But single digit infections in many cases. They started to realize that the more they created this anxiety in the public the more the eyeballs were drawn to their TV screens and web sites.

Federal regulations in place long before Trump took office prevented doctors and hospitals from testing and/or developing their own tests to confirm infections. This didn’t stop the media and the Democrats from blaming Trump for any kind of response.

To be fair, President Trump hasn’t helped his case. He downplayed the virus too much in his public statements. I don’t think he realized how ripe the public is to be whipped into a frenzy over nothing. His speech to the nation on March 11, 2020 was uninspiring to say the least. Evidence of that is the plunge in the stock market today.

They tried to kill Trump’s re-election many times since his election. Like a vampire he came back to life every time they thought they had him down. COVID-19 could be the silver bullet that puts his re-election in the grave.

When talking to my family about this I tried to illustrate the absurdity of the panic surrounding COVID-19. I predicted to them that camps would be set up to separate people from the general population. Low and behold my exaggeration came true today!

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York would establish a “containment area” in New Rochelle to control the spread of a novel coronavirus in the Westchester County suburb at the center of the outbreak in the state.

The area would close facilities—including schools—within one mile of the center of the outbreak for two weeks, starting Thursday, state officials said. The containment step would close “major gathering places” and facilities, such as temples in the area, the governor said, although individuals would still be free to walk around.